As I understood it, one of President Trump’s big campaign promises was deporting illegal immigrants, with a priority on criminals. Lots and lots of media coverage since the inauguration, most of which was just anecdotal and/or about policy issues.
As an operations hump and a metrics nut, I wondered what the numbers looked like. So, I googled it: “how many deportations in 2025.” Nothing obvious popped up on the 1st page. (Being lazy, I didn’t scroll further, nor did I click on any links since none seemed to hold the promise of simply answering the simple question.)
I did find this on the ICE website: https://www.ice.gov/spotlight/statistics. Actually, a very nice dashboard. It looks like there were over 68,000 deportations of criminals in FY2024, up from over 57,000 in FY2023 and 38,000 in FY2022. But take a look, there are no 2025 stats (yet?). FY is fiscal year, which starts October 1st. We’re already almost one-third of the way through FY25.
I’m a big advocate for operational excellence and using data to improve operations. Once a policy or strategy decision is made, it’s all about operations. You have to measure it, manage it, and report on it.
Independent of whether or not I agree with the program, here’s what I’d like to see. If I made this very high profile promise and wanted to keep my promise, I’d issue a press release with the data every day. If I were the media, I’d be pestering ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House to do so. And if I were ICE, I’d have the data and use it to identify and fix performance shortfalls and discover and deploy best practices. In fairness, maybe they are. But being transparent demands showing the numbers. Opaque is the opposite of transparent and today it’s opaque.
Of course, we’re only 7 days into the new Administration. We’ll see.
Discover more from Reed Harrison's
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I fear your comments are a bit too much like fact-checking. Trump’s base is more interested in making a big splash than facts/data. If you are asking, do they understand the logistics involved in a massive operation like deporting millions of people, then we all know the answer to your question. They will deport a few people, and make sure there will be a splash on TV for a few days, and then they will move on. It seems unlikely they will put together a serious massive-scale long-term effort. The good news is that they probably lack the patience and the skills to deport millions of people.
The bad news is that they will make a mess of many things. I’m very worried about what they have already done to funding agencies like NIH and NSF. They have the power to shut down research funding, and research universities. All they have to do is freeze spending and do nothing to unfreeze it. That’s much easier than deporting millions of people. It doesn’t take much understanding of facts/data/logistics to shut down universities in America.
Popping up a few levels, I worry that too many people do not understand your comments about metrics. I could use your help to make that case more accessible to more decision makers. I’m seeing a lot of smart people making bad decisions based on bad information. It would help if you wrote another piece with more tutorial information about how you have done these things in the past.
Thx, Ken. I hope facts and data rather than PR, expediency, and “sound bites” rule the day. I’ll work on a metrics tutorial